January 29, 2013

Well, I mentioned I was working on a little something-something to go in these favor bags.

And now here's that something-something.

Bubble gum necklaces!

These are my little Valentine treats I made up to send to my nieces & to give to one of our little neighborhood friends.

I know they say diamonds are a girl's best friend but I'm thinking for the 10 & younger crowd it may be something like bubble gum & unicorns.....oh, and that Justin Bieber kid.

Interested in making some fun bubble gum necklaces yourself?

They are super easy to put together

{the only hard part is piercing the gumball with out destroying it!}

and you can mix & match

the colors to spice things up a bit.

Step 1: Pierce a hole on one side of the gumball using a metal skewer, or knitting needle, or get totally creative & crazy and use a meat thermometer as I did {a clean one of course!}. Avoid piercing the hole all the way through, otherwise the gumball will just crack in half.

Step 2: Flip the the gumball over and pierce a hole on the other side.

Try to line this hole up with the first hole you pierced on the other side.

Step 3: String your ribbon through the hole using a long needle.

The thicker the ribbon the harder it is to loop through.

Step: Tie the ends of your ribbon into a bow.

To fancy things up tie a coordinating bow around the necklace near

the bubblegum.

I found the bubblegum at our local Party City.

They have a variety of fun colors to choose from.

Pretty enough to wear or eat!
Next week I hope to share the Valentine I'm working on for my nephew.
See you on the flip side.

January 27, 2013

Today I thought I'd share with you a way to create one-of-a kind favor bags.

I figured this would be wayyyyy more interesting than the heartburn story I

was planning on sharing with y'all. You're welcome.

So for quite some time now I have been collecting idea after idea of craft projects that you can create using freezer paper stencils. That's right who knew a crafter's best friend

could be found right there in the foil aisle?! The wax side of the freezer paper can be easily ironed onto a whole slew of fabrics which means you can basically create any design your heart desires, cut it out, slap it on a tote, shirt, pillowcase, what ever, & then stencil away like a rock star. The best part is once your project is complete the wax paper peels off soooooo easily.

So the Valentine bug finally caught up with me this weekend & I decided to give this whole freezer paper thingamajigee a try.

You can do your design all in one color or if you choose to do a variety of colors like me then you are going to need to mark off some stripes. I found that washi craft tape worked really well for this task.

If doing stipes, there are going to be two parts to the painting process.

The first stripes I painted were the blue and red.

Allow paint to dry and then remove the tape.

For the second set of colors {the pinks} place washi tape over the previously painted stripes so that they are covered. Apply the paint and allow to dry. Remove tape.

2. Exciting happenings this week: We ordered our crib and glider/rocker for the nursery.

It's official this baby is coming home with us whether it wants to or not!

Pali Crib-Source-Simply Baby Furniture

3. Scored a lovely piece of art during one of my recent Goodwill runs, also the same trip where my husband conveniently "fell ill" as soon as we walked in.
But I didn't have time to snap pics of it this morning before I left for work so you're going to have to wait to see it. I know, I know you're thinking "But Jennifer how will I sleep tonight?"

4. Thanks to a referral by another blog buddy it's official I am completely infatuated with The Style By Emily Henderson blog because let's face it I needed one more thing to be infatuated with.

5. There's a Sweetheart Special going on right now at the Delightfully Noted shop. Run, don't walk, and get yourself 20% off any Valentine card order.

January 22, 2013

So for those of you who have been hanging around my side of the hood for awhile it is no secret how much I hated our fireplace. Back in November I shared the start of some renovations we were doing around here; painting, putting in wood floors, replacing the floor boards,

AND bringing down this monstrosity.

Seriously, it was giving fireplaces every where a bad rep.

For the most part I chose to neglect this room since the day we moved in because well.....I didn't want to try to decorate around this green-eye monster.

The sad part about this whole story is that this is the first room you see when you enter our house so for the past five years I've been making our guest come in through a back window.

Eventually people just stopped coming over.

Lucky for us we have a friend in the hood who is an independent carpenter and over the holidays he built us this beautiful mantle that makes me squeal like a young Justin Beiber fan.

Those wood floors aren't bad either, eh?

Originally, we were just going to replace the tiles and add a mantle but the fireplace gods must have been looking out for us because then I saw this beaut on the internet and my soul was sold on building something from scratch. Well, not me but the neighbor.

January 20, 2013

You know that saying "third time's a charm?" Turns out it's lies, all lies.

There's nothing worse then envisioning a project that should be as easy as catching a two year old picking his nose and then to have that project fail THREE TIMES.

Okay, perhaps waterboarding may be worse.

So let me fill you in. I've been wanting to add a little art work to the hallway that leads to our garage and I thought it would be really cool to make a longitude/latitude sign that represents our home, ya know 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. The first attempt I thought I would be super awesome at frugality and use an old piece of wall art we had hiding away in one of our closets that was no longer my style.

Attempt # 1: For starters the art work needed to be covered with spray paint in the color that I wanted my wording to be in (my choice was Krylon's Khaki). Since I'm "with child" (I just find that saying hilarious......it makes me feel like a young girl back in the Baby Scoop Era who's going to be sent away to Aunt Millie's house aka confined to a maternity home) the hubby sacrificed his brain cells for me and took over the spray painting part. That was my first mistake. Apparently, he must of thought he was competing for some world record and basically unloaded a full can of spray paint on this project. There was no progression of graceful application of thin layers. He appeared to have an "all or nothing" mantra that day. I swear I could have scuba dived in the layer of spray paint he applied. IT WAS THAT THICK.

Things just got worse from there.........it took me pretty much all afternoon to get my Silhouette to cut my vinly letters properly {word of advice if you just received one of these machines, just throw out the instruction manual. Seriously, I have found trial and error has been the best way to get this machine to work for me and in the end my settings are never even close to what they recommend!}Fast forward through all the steps {applying the vinyl to the wall art, spray painting my top color, allowing to dry, etc....} to the end where I went to remove my vinyl, despite allowing the project to dry overnight {which may have been the problem} the paint was gummy as I was peeling up my letters which made the outline of the words look hideous. The whole thing was ruined. I admit it, I cried because well, that's what you do when you're "with child" and your hormones are on crack.

Attempt #2: The old wall art happen to come in a set so I still had another picture for round two. Things I did differently this time: gave my husband a spray paint lesson, didn't spend hours with the silhouette machine because I now know how to bootleg the thing to work for me, and I also removed the vinyl letters when the paint was dry to the touch instead of waiting till the next day. Dog nammit! It was ruined again! The paint had seeped under alot of the vinyl and alot of the letters in my words weren't legible AND AGAIN the paint was coming up gummy. BUT this time instead of crying I just drowned my sadness in a box of mac n' cheese.

Attempt #3: Now I know what you're thinking, "for the love of baby Jesus please give it up Jennifer!" But at this point I had convinced myself that it was the surface of the old art work {fiber board??} that was causing the icky paint problems. So I headed to Michael's & picked up a wooden plaque {so much for my free project!}
AND I started over.....again. I had the hubz spray paint it with my Krylon Khaki.

Cut out my vinyl words with my Silhouette machine.
Used transfer paper to apply my letter & numbers to the wood sign
{Editor's note: I used scraps I had leftover so that is why my vinyl is 2 different colors}.

Covered the the wood and vinyl with white spray paint & allowed to dry.

Then came the time to remove the vinyl stickers.

I was anticipating angels singing but instead I got a sad trambone.

Despite my best efforts the paint seeped AGAIN under the vinyl letters and it was bad.

I refused to trash a third project though!

Thank goodness the distressed look is in. I mean for home decor not people.

The look of distress on people is never good.

So to make it appear as if this whole crappy project was on purpose I sanded the front of the sign to make it look weathered and then added some antiquing glaze to the top of it.

I also dressed up the side of the wood&nbs
p;sign with some blue paint to jazz it up a bit.

Sigh.....not bad but definately not the finale I had imagined.

I would have liked the letters and numbers to be a lot crisper & cleaner.

I think in the future I will stick with making vinyl stencils with

my Silhouette machine and using those to make my words.

Hindsight is always 20/20.

Have any projects that were a total flop lately?

PS. Incase you're like the Unabomber Jr. or something and are reading this, just so you know I photoshopped a few numbers on the longitude/latitude part of my pictures. So this isn't REALLY our TRUE location.......I believe this may lead you to the middle of the lion's den at Brookfield Zoo.

Mad in Crafts attracted some top views and I'm pretty sure this super nifty fire & ice lantern had something to do with it! How cool is that?

This one comes as no surprise! Lori's dining room turned living room
over at Thrifty Decor Mom is absolutely beautiful!
Of course you know she had me at blue........

Perhaps your a magazine hoarder like me?
Hey! It's better than collecting ALOT of cats, right?
I think we all enjoy a creative way to recycle those dusty ol' mags and that is exactly what Mari from Crab + Fish did by creating this useful and creative bowl.

Lots of great ideas from the top 2012 post over at the Atkinson Drive blog.
Rating at the top is this neat chevron painted wall.
I'm envious of anyone who can paint any shape crisp and clean on the wall.
Definately not one of my top talents!

So there you have it!
Thanks to everyone who participated.
Can't wait to see what kind of crazy creativeness you all come up with this year.